CRY Launches Website On International Girl Child Day

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-Staff

By Staff

Wednesday, September 24, 2008, 11:56

BANGALORE, September 23, 2008: On September 24th, International Girl Child Day, CRY – Child Rights and You, will launch a micro site cry4girls.cry.org. The content and tonality go beyond the call to stop discrimination, asserting that if unfettered, 'there is no stopping the girl child'. While highlighting known symbols of discrimination feticide being the most prominent, the site explores the real reasons behind it, the social structures and patriarchy that perpetuate this. Celebrated as daughters, mothers and sisters, the girl is lost to these roles and the individual behind these roles takes a backseat.

Highly interactive and informative, the micro site has videos, an opinion poll, articles, volunteer opportunities, greetings, events, campaigns material downloads, an e-letter and much more. Showcasing strong and positive women like Bimola, elaborating on the skewed sex ratio, exploring the hidden tentacles in the social system, the sites navigates through various dimensions and points to a change that must come from within us all. And so there is a blog where you can open up and speak your mind and a charter that you can pledge to.

CRY works to ensure all children their right to live, learn, play and develop their full potential. However, given the situation of the girl child, she is more vulnerable to violation of rights. At CRY we believe the girl is a child first and that gender is merely descriptive. Yet statistics show that girls have not fared well so far, and this is not due to their lack of capability, but because people around incapacitate her.

Garnering a citizen led movement; a year ago, CRY spearheaded a campaign to "Eliminate Discrimination, not the Girl Child." Responding to this and demanding justice for the girl child, over 6,000 people from all walks of life across the country and the globe, signed onto a charter and committed to work towards a just world for all children. This will be given to the Minister for Women and Child Development.

Over six decades past Independence, India continues to struggle with preference for a male child and severe social restrictions for the girl child. Little has been done to protect the Constitutional rights of the girl child and provide her the level playing field that is being denied to her by an accident of birth. Today girls from middle India are shattering glass ceilings with impunity and overtaking boys in every walk of life but there is a vast, silent majority whose lives are fraught with discrimination, denial, and quiet despair. That is if they are allowed to be born at all!

Says Ms. Regina Thomas, Director South, CRY, "The task before society is huge and we at CRY believe that every member of our society should take responsibility to change the life of the girl child permanently. Let us see her as an individual and celebrate her person. A girl's childhood can and must be preserved, cherished, nurtured and protected."

Discrimination takes many forms – sex determination and feticide even before birth to denial of education, nutrition, health care as the girl child is growing up to be a woman. This denial also means that only one out of every six girls lives to celebrate her 15th birthday. The other statistic that reflects the dismal state of affairs is the declining female to male ratio which is 927:1000 in the 0-6 age group. While the government has tried to combat this by launching various development and welfare schemes, the situation on the ground provides a different picture. It remains a matter of concern on how far these schemes have been successful in ensuring the rights and privileges of the girl child.

Statistics ought to get everybody very concerned. Every 6th girl child death is due to gender discrimination; every year the number of deaths of the girl child compared to the boy exceeds 300,000; female mortality exceeds male in 224 out of the 402 districts in India.

In terms of basic nourishment, one in every five adolescent boys is malnourished and one in every two adolescent girls in India is undernourished.

While the Indian Constitution declares that "the state shall provide free and compulsory education to all children in the age of 6-14 yrs" less than 50% of children (6-14 yrs) attend school and over 50 % girls fail to even enrol. Far more girls fail to complete primary school and 53% of girls in the age group of 5-9 years are illiterate. The national literacy rate of girls over seven years is 54% against 75% for boys.

In 2006-07, around 497,343 children were impacted through CRY's programmes in 5250 villages/ slums, 143 defunct government primary schools were revived, 192 government primary schools were maintained with 100% retention of students, 317 Panchayat Village Education Committees were activated, 22,736 children were mainstreamed into government primary schools, 102 villages were made 100% free from child labour and 690 children's groups were formed.

About CRY (Child Rights and You):
CRY (Child Rights and You) earlier known as Child Relief and You is India's leading advocate for child rights. Over the last three decades, CRY has partnered with NGOs, communities, government, the media and is dedicated to mobilize all sections of society to eliminate the root cause of deprivation, exclusion, exploitation and abuse.